Roy Bhaskar has remarked that realists are unblushingly falliblist and historicist
about science. They feel no need to be uncritical and 'complimentary' about everything
that passes for knowledge or is done in science's name . . . no reason to 'buy
in' to shoddy science . . . Nor do they feel under any imperative to write the
story of science Whiggishly as one long continuous success story-without blemishes
or periods of stasis and even regression" (156). The point holds for the physical
sciences, but is most obvious with respect to the human sciences and the study
of the arts. Indeed, it is particularly clear to those of us who have rejected
what Noam Chomsky (following Donald Hockney) calls the "bifurcation thesis" (roughly,
the thesis that objects in physics, chemistry, etc., are real, but objects in
linguistics, psychology, etc., are not [see Chomsky 16-22]), those of us who believe
that there are ascertainable facts about the human mind, society, and art, facts
open to systematic scientific investigation.

There are a number of problems with "Whiggish" history in any discipline. First
of all, there are economic, political, and ideological factors which frequently
vitiate our evaluations of theories. These factors are particularly evident when
the indigenous sciences of a colonized people (e.g., classical Sanskrit poetics)
are at issue, though they operate at all times and at all places. Secondly, even
in evaluation that is motivated by and focussed on genuinely scientific concerns,
it is not always possible to understand or appreciate the explanatory power of
a theory or hypothesis. Sometimes, a full appreciation of the value of a theory
in one area must await the development of our understanding in other areas. This
is what happens when we refer to a theory as "ahead of its time". Perhaps the
best-known cases of this come from linguistics. Chomsky has repeatedly argued
that the rationalist linguistics of the 17th century was far superior to the behavioral
linguistics of the mid 20th century. However, this superiority was unrecognizable
as the theoretical insights of the earlier authors far exceeded the state of psychological
and related understanding in Europe during that period. Rationalist linguistic
theory reached a sort of dead end in then-contemporary psychology, anthropology
(which provided inadequate knowledge of non-European languages), etc. It was only
after the intervening developments (not only in linguistic psychology, anthropology,
etc., but also in mathematics and elsewhere) that the research project adumbrated
in this work could really begin. More germane to our concerns, Paul Kiparsky has
shown that generative grammar was first developed in India by the Sanskrit grammarians,
preeminently Panini, in the fifth century B.C.E. (It is generally acknowledged
that classical Indian linguistic science was vastly superior to the science of
the West until very recently.) It was, however, subsequently forgotten, as there
was no broader scientific context-and, one might add, no broader political context-in
which its generative principles could be adequately appreciated. Its value only
came to be recognized after the development of Chomskyan linguistics in the late
1950's and 1960's.

In the following pages, I would like to consider Sanskrit poetic theory in a similar
context. Starting more than two millennia ago, and extending over a millennium,
Sanskrit theorists developed an elaborate theory of poetics which was closely
allied with linguistic study and, in my view, equally brilliant-though also equally
ignored in the West. I would attribute our ignorance of this theory principally
to imperialism and racism, but there are also factors relating to the theory itself.
Specifically, this theory reached a culmination and a sort of theoretical impasse
in the writings of Abhinavagupta. However, in developing the theory, Abhinavagupta
anticipated current principles of cognitive science, much as Panini anticipated
current principles of generative grammar. Now, with the aid of cognitive science,
it is possible to recognize the value of Sanskrit poetics and to develop them
beyond the impasse they had reached in the 11th century. There is, however, a
difference between this situation and the cases of Panini or the Rationalist linguists.
In the case of Panini and the Rationalists, current theories, in effect, rediscovered
the insights of the earlier writers, so that by the time these insights were rediscovered
they had already become part of contemporary thought. Indeed, it was because these
early principles had been independently rediscovered that the early theory came
to be appreciated as an historical precursor. The situation with Sanskrit poetics
is, in this respect, substantially different. In my view, we still have no adequate
or even productive and plausible theory of aesthetic creation and response. What
I hope to indicate, then, is not that the insights of Anandavardhana, Abhinavagupta,
and others have been rediscovered in cognitive science. Rather, I hope to indicate
that, when redeveloped in the context of cognitive science as a broad theory of
the human mind, the work of these writers provides us with a plausible and productive
cognitive theory of poetics. In other words, the theory of Abhinavagupta does
not anticipate a currently developed sub-field within cognitive science, but rather
might serve to guide the development of such a sub-field.

More exactly, I shall begin with a broad outline of Sanskrit poetics from its
beginnings through Anandavardbana (for a more detailed discussion, the reader
may wish to consult a history of Sanskrit poetics, for example that of Gerow).
Roughly speaking, Anandavardhana sought to develop and systematize previous ideas
in Sanskrit theory in order to provide an adequate description of poetic effect.
Abhinavagupta took Anandavardhana's descriptive ideas and sought to provide an
explanatory framework for them; the second section is consequently devoted to
the explanatory views of Abhinavagupta. In the third section, I turn to contemporary
cognitive science, first presenting what I take to be a plausible, partial theory
of the internal "lexicon" (or mental dictionary/encyclopedia), then going on to
reformulate Abhinavagupta's views in terms of this theory.

ANANDAVARDHANA AND SUGGESTION

Histories of Sanskrit poetics generally divide early indian theories into two
broad traditions: alamkara and rasa. "Alamkara" or "ormamentation" refers to a
range of poetic devices and rhetorical figures from alliteration to metaphor.
In itself, the alamkara tradition is of limited interest, for it hardly extends
beyond taxonomy (e.g., listing and describing the varieties and sub-varieties
of figures such as simile). On the other hand, without this often tedious program
of analysis and categorization, including its rudimentary literary semantics,
Anandavardhana could never have formulated his seminal theory of dhvani or "suggestion",
to which we shall turn in a moment

Anandavardhana's work is, however, a culmination and synthesis, not only of alamkara
analysis, but of rasa theory as well. Rasa is usually translated as "sentiment."
It is distinguished from bhava or "emotion," to which it is, nonetheless, closely
related. Specifically, bhava is what we feel in ordinary life-love, sorrow, happiness,
anger, etc. Rasa, in contrast, is what we feel in experiencing a work of art.
It is akin to emotion, but not identical with it. (Hereafer, I shall use "emotion"
rather than bhava as the concepts are pretty much identical; I shall, however,
most often use rasa rather than "sentiment" as rasa is in this context a technical
term and thus has no precise ordinary language equivalent-just as "gravity" or
"quark" or "morpheme" has no precise ordinary language equivalent.) Specifically,
when I watch a romantic play, I do not actually love the hero or heroine (as I
might love my spouse), but I do experience some sort of feeling. Moreover, this
feeling is somehow related to love (in a way that it is not related to sorrow
or anger, for example). Thus the Sanskrit theorists say that I am experiencing
the "erotic rasa," not the emotion of love per se.

The earliest extant development of this theory is in the Natyasastra or Treatise
on Dramaturgy attributed to Bharata-muni, but composed by a number of authors
between the second century B.C.E. and the sixth century C.E. This seminal volume
lists eight primary emotions and corresponding rasas: love/the erotic, sorrow/the
pathetic, and so on. (Lest this seem too restrictive, they acknowledge a wide
range of ancillary feelings also.) Each literary work, in order to be aesthetically
effective, was required to have one dominant rasa. This is not to say that other
rasas could not enter: they not only could, but must. However, any additional
rasas must function to further the dominant rasa. For example, suppose that the
dominant rasa of a work is the erotic. Then it makes perfect sense to bring in
the pathetic rasa. The pathetic may be part of the erotic, just as sorrow may
be part of love. (Indeed, another way of thinking about the relation between rasa
and bhava is that the characters experience the bhavas [say, love and sorrow]
while the readers/spectators experience the rasas [the erotic and the pathetic]).
But the pathetic rasa in the work must operate to contribute to the erotic rasa.
The same constraint holds if the dominant rasa is the pathetic and the erotic
is subsidiary. If the subsidiary rasa does not contribute to the dominant rasa,
the experience of the reader/spectator will push in different directions and the
overall aesthetic experience will be weakened; it will not be a satisfactory experience
of the erotic or of the pathetic.

Again, Anandavardhana combined the two strains of Sanskrit poetics developing
them into a unified theory of aesthetic response, in part, based on the concept
of dhvani or "suggestion." By the time of Anandavardhana, Sanskrit theorists of
"figures of thought" had isolated several varieties of meaning, literal and metaphorical.
At this level, the distinctions with which they were operating were roughly the
same as those operative in western poetics/semantics today. They had concepts
of literal meaning, idiomatic meaning, and various metaphorical and related meanings
(encompassing simile and other figures); they had also isolated a number of ways
in which non-literal meanings could be manifested and interpreted (e.g., through
some explicit marker, such as English "like" and "as" in similes). For example,
"Varanasi is on the Ganges" does not literally mean that Varanasi is on the Ganges;
it means (idiomatically) that Varanasi is on the bank of the Ganges; "Moon-faced
beauty" does not literally mean that the woman's face was the moon, but that it
was rounded and fair, and so on. In addition, Sanskrit theorists had isolated
a variety of poetic and other implications (or, rather, non-logical "implicatures,"
to use Paul Grice's term), both literal and non-literal. For example, a message
sent by a woman to her lover, "The lion, they tell me, does not prowl at the riverbank,"
would involve a complex metaphor/implicature to the effect that, if the woman
and her lover meet at the riverbank, they will not be caught.

Anandavardhana distinguished a number of varieties of dhvani, covering these non-literal
meanings. However, he maintained that there was one sort of meaning which was
not part of this typology and which is most appropriately the referent of the
term dhvani. This dhvani proper, is not an idiom or metaphor (or simile, metonymy,
etc.); nor is it an implicature (cf. Amaladass 92-93). Developing and systematizing
Anandavardhana somewhat, we may say that it is, rather, a non-paraphrasable "suggestion"
of a word, phrase, sentence, topic, or (linguistically constructed) situation
(see Amaladass 105). (Hereafter, I will use text, as a term ambiguous between
word, phrase, etc.) To say that the dhvani of a given text is non-paraphraseable
is not to say that one cannot say anything about it (as Anandavardhana emphasizes
[671]). Quite the contrary. One can say many things about it. It is not unparaphraseable
because of being ineffable. There are, rather, three reasons why dhvani is unparaphraseable.
The first is that it is infinitely ramified. We can never enumerate all the suggestions,
even all the relevant suggestions, of a given text (cf. Abhinavagupta Locana,
206.) This is not, however, a distinctive property of dbvani. For example, some
metaphors are, roughly, paraphraseable in the sense that one can list all the
relevant information conveyed by the metaphor (especially for those metaphors
which are close to idioms). But many metaphors are not fully paraphraseable in
this sense. And at least for larger texts, even the relations between literal
meanings are not fully paraphraseable.

The second reason that dbvani is not paraphraseable is more important and more
distinctive. Indeed, it indicates that, in a sense, dbvani is not even partially
paraphraseable. In the language of analytic philosophy, the dbvani of a text cannot
be substituted for the text with a preservation of truth value (cf. Abhinavagupta
Locana, 81). Indeed, dhvani is usually not statable in the form of a proposition
which might have or not have a truth value. Consider a metaphor partially explicit
in Derek Walcott's Dream on Monkey Mountain: "Makak is a lion." As a metaphor,
this means that Makak is brave, ferocious to his foes, etc. (For the purposes
of the example, we can assume that it is not fully paraphraseable and thus that
this list will not come to an end.) But note that each of these interpretations
is substitutable for a lion, with a preservation of truth-value. "Makak is brave"
and "Makak is ferocious to his foes" are just as true as "Makak is a lion." (I
leave aside the issue of how to specify "metaphorical truth." Clearly, at least
at a certain point in the play, this sentence is [ambiguously] true in a way that,
say, "Makak is a gazelle" or "Makak is a unicorn" is not.) In contrast, consider
the standard example of "a village on the Ganges." This phrase, the Sanskrit commentators
emphasize, size, suggests holiness due to the holiness of the sacred river Ganges.
However, there is no way in which the word "holiness" can be substituted for the
phrase or for part of the phrase. Moreover, there is no way that this suggestion
can be turned into a proposition. For example, the suggestion of holiness does
not imply or implicate that the village itself is holy or that any of the villagers
is holy. Returning to Walcott, we might say that the name "Makak" suggests a whole
range of west African mythological motifs concerning the divinity of the monkey,
and at the same time a range of contrary European attitudes. Again, these are
not substitutable for "Makak." Nor do they imply or implicate any propositions.

Even at this level, the notion of dhvani seems to be substantially different from
anything in the Western tradition. For example, even though "connotations" are
not conceived as truth-preserving, they are typically conceived of as involving
some sort of assertion. Western theorists may well say that "a village on the
Ganges" connotes "holiness" but I suspect that they would unreflectively conceive
of this as part of a (perhaps ironic) assertion-that the village is or should
be holy, that the villagers have a special duty to be holy, etc. For this reason,
it would seem somewhat odd to say that a range of Yoruba beliefs are a "connotation"
of the name "Makak," for, again, none of these beliefs is asserted (or denied)
by this "connotation."

But this is not all that distinguishes dhvani from common Western notions-and
this brings us to the final and perhaps most important reason why dhvani is not
paraphraseable. Crucially, dhvani is not purely semantic. it is affective as well.
Specifically, in the strictest sense, Anandavardhana tells us, dhvani is rasadhvani,
the dhvani of rasa-not the intellectual implication of some sentiment, but the
"suggestion" of a rasa as an affective experience (see Abhinavagupta's comments
on Anandavardhana in Locana 70). in other words, dhvani is not paraphraseable,
most importantly because it is not solely, or perhaps even primarily, a meaning;
as rasadhvani, the "truest" form of dhvani, it is an experience-along the lines
of what we would call "a moment of tenderness" or a pang of sadness." It is, in
short, an experience of rasa. A literary portrait of a village on the Ganges involves
a full rasadhvani of holiness (or sacred peace) only if it gives us a feeling
of that holiness (or sacred peace) along with the more narrowly semantic suggestion.
Indeed, the feeling is all that is crucial. The name "Makak" communicates not
only the idea of Yoruba beliefs, but a feeling as well, or a complex feeling:
sadness (or the pathetic rasa) over their loss, anger (or the furious rasa) over
their colonial denigration, etc.

In sum, aesthetic response is a matter of the experience of rasas. These rasas
are evoked in a reader by words, sentences, topics, etc., presented in a literary
work, but not through their literal meaning, or even through their various secondary
meanings, as such. Rather they are evoked through the clouds of non-denumerable,
non-substitutable, non-propositional suggestions which surround these texts. Finally,
it is important to add that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they are evoked
without our having any explicit awareness of suggested meaning. We do not, in
other words, selfconsciously infer some semantic suggestion, then feel the rasa.
Rather, we watch the play or read the poem without reflecting on either the meaning
or associated feeling. Indeed, if we have to stop and reflect, we may not experience
the rasa.

ABHINAVAGUPTA, MEMORY TRACES, AND AESTHETIC FEELING

Abhinavagupta turned his attention away from the linguistic and related abstractions
which had preoccupied even Anandavardhana, focussing his attention instead on
the human mind, specifically the mind of the reader or viewer of a literary work.
The first step in Abhinavagupta's project involved the at least tacit recognition
that the theory of rasadhvani, could not be understood as a theory of abstract
linguistic structure. Rather, it only made sense as a theory of the way people
respond to literature. In other words, rasadhvani had to be conceived in psychological
terms.

Broadly speaking, Abhinavagupta was a transcendental realist whose philosophy
involved a strong empiricist component. (A Hindu theologian himself, he was one
of the harshest opponents of the Vedantist view that perceptual reality is illusion
or maya; see, for example, Pandit 23.) His theory of mind was, consequently, realist
(implicitly eschewing the "bifurcation thesis"). Predictably, it was broadly similar
to other (Eastern and Western) theories of mind in isolating perception, memory,
and other components or faculties. For our purposes, the most important part of
Abhinavagupta's theory of mind is his theory of memory, both storage and recollection.
For Abhinavagupta, all experiences-perceptual, cognitive, emotional, etc.-leave
"traces" in the mind (see Aesthetic Experience 79). Drawing out the implications
of Abhinavagupta's analysis, we may understand these traces as having two components:
one representational, one emotive. The representational part may be perceptual
(e.g., a visual image) or propositional (e.g., a certain fact). The emotive part
is not the abstract recollection of one's having had an emotion-such a recollection
would be propositional. It is, rather, a sort of re-experiencing of the emotion.
It is not, in other words, remembering that one was sad or happy or frightened
at a given time and place, but actually feeling again, in some degree, that sadness
or happiness or fright. The point is most obvious with respect to strong emotions.
For example, if one recalls a deceased friend or relative, one will have certain
visual and other impressions, one will remember certain facts ("He had a passion
for samosas;" " Her favorite authors were Shakespeare and Tagore"), and one will
probably experience again, in a more or less attenuated form, the sense of loss,
the sorrow which one felt at his/her death.

Now these traces, Abhinavagupta tells us, are usually latent in our minds. At
times they are fully activated-that is, it times we recall these memories, re-experience
the emotions, etc. This is all commonsensical enough. But, Abhinavagupta continues,
there are also times when these traces are neither latent nor fully activated-and
these are the most crucial. In other words, there are times when these traces
are in some sense activated, but are not brought into self-reflective consciousness.
Or, more exactly, there are times when we are not self-reflectively aware of the
representational content of the trace, and yet feel some hint of associated affect.
This is, I think, common in our experience, though we may not immediately recognize
the fact. I enter a building and am suddenly sad; I ask myself why and then recall
an embarrassing or unpleasant event which occurred the last time I entered the
building. Clearly, the memory had in some sense been activated (i.e., it was not
fully latent) and clearly the associated affect had bled into my conscious experience
(i.e., I felt sad), but the representational content of the memory was initially
not conscious.

This sort of analysis is what allows Abhinavagupta to explain the phenomena isolated
and described by Anandavardhana. Specifically, Abhinavagupta indicates that rasadhvani
operates in the following manner. Through the semantic dhvani-which, again, is
not explicitly brought to consciousness-the literary work activates traces in
the mind of the reader (see Abhinavagupta Locana, 81), but does not bring them
into consciousness. Again, these traces may be activated by words, phrases, topics,
etc.; thus stories of suffering will activate memories of suffering, stories of
romantic love will activate memories of romantic love, and so on, both at a rather
general level, and in various specific details (e.g., a wedding day, an estrangement
and reconciliation), etc. Once these traces are activated, the associated emotions
seep into consciousness (again, not as ideas, but directly as feelings). The experience
of the rasa of a literary work is precisely the experience of these feelings.
More exactly, developing Abhinavagupta's ideas, we may say that all speech involves
the activation of traces, the consequent seeping of affect, etc. However, most
often, these traces are activated in a haphazard and non-cumulative manner, or
else they are fully recalled. What makes aesthetic experience distinctive is that
such activations are patterned; they are focussed on traces of a specific type,
which is to say, traces which bear to one another a certain similarity in both
representation and affect (e.g., in being memories of death and feelings of sorrow).
While any given activation is likely to produce only very limited, perhaps imperceptible,
experiences of affect, this sort of repeated, patterned activation should result
in a more pronounced and continuous experience. As Abhinavagupta puts it, "the
basic emotion is put to use in the process of relishing [a work of art]: through
a succession of memory-elements it adds together a thought-trend which one has
already experienced in one's own life" (Locana 117; see also 182, "the relishing
of beauty arises in us from our memory bank of mental states which are suitable,
to the "basic emotions" of the characters; and Aesthetic Experience 112).

Abhinavagupta extends this idea somewhat further when he argues that aesthetic
pleasure results from the "generalization" of emotion in rasa, which is to say,
its removal from the self-interest which is part of the link between the affect
and the representational content in memory traces. In other words, when we fully
remember a trace, the emotion which we experience is tied to self-interest (e.g.,
to our own personal loss of a loved one). However, through literature, we experience
a version of the affect removed from its direct link with any particular (egocentric)
representation in memory, and thus at least partially removed from self-interest
(see Abhinavagupta Aesthetic Experience, 86-87 and 96-97). In this way, ram may
be re-defined as emotion isolated from such self-interest and may even be compared,
in Abhinavagupta's view, with the experience of religious enlightenment or moksa,
where such self-interest is entirely extinguished (see, for example, Locana 226).
(Note that, for Abhinavagupta, the dominant rasa of a successful work always resolves
itself into santarasa, the rasa of peace, a temporary and partial version of the
endless and perfect peace which accompanies moksa.)

To some extent, I have explicated and developed Abhinavagupta's ideas in a manner
coherent with and partially derivative from contemporary cognitive science. However,
I have not, I believe, fundamentally altered his claims or basic concepts. Again,
it is my view that current theoretical and empirical work allows us to understand
those claims and concepts-as claims and concepts of a nascent science-more thoroughly
than could Abhinavagupta himself. However, I have refrained thus far from giving
a full blown, reductive account of Abhinavagupta's ideas within a broader theory
of cognition. in the following section, I will attempt something along these lines@
a translation of Abhinavagupta's theoretical premises into one version of a theory
of mind which I take to be plausible in light of recent research in cognitive
science. As I have already indicated, cognitive science has little if anything
to add to Anandavardhana's and Abhinavaguptas ideas about literary response. My
concern, then, is merely to situate these ideas in a current theoretical framework,
which is part of ongoing research programs (to advert to Lakatos's valuable concept).
After undertaking this translation, I will consider briefly the degree to which
we may reasonably take the cognitive model of the mind to reflect real psychological
structures.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND RASADHVANI

Cognitive science comprises a set of related, but competing theories of the structure
and operation of the human mind. Due to the nature of Abhinavagupta's hypotheses,
I will be concentrating on the storage and accessing or recollection of representational
knowledge (i.e., knowledge about something, including memories, etc., as opposed
to procedural knowledge, knowledge of how to do something). I will assume that
all representational information is stored in and accessible through a single
long-term memory "unit." This unit includes a broad range of information which,
in everyday life, we would be inclined to divide between a dictionary (meanings
of words), an encyclopedia (general facts about things), and a biography or personal
archive (propositional and perceptual memories of individual history). (This is
a controversial assumption. However, the following analyses could be rewritten-with
some loss in elegance-in terms of three separate but closely interrelated units.)
Following standard usage, I shall refer to this unit as the "lexicon." However,
I should note that this term should not be taken to imply a sort of unidirectional
organization and access: from dictionary/meaning through encyclopedia/belief to
personal archive/memory. in fact, lexical "entries" (e.g., that for "monkey")
are structured in such a way as to allow access not only from words to memories,
but from perceptions (e.g., seeing or hearing a monkey) to words, from memories
to beliefs, etc. indeed, just as there are words for which we have no beliefs
or memories, and some for which we do not have even basic meanings ("I've heard
that word before@ what does it mean?"), there are also uncategorized perceptions
and perceptual memories ("I've seen that before@ what is it?"). Thus it is no
more a lexicon in our ordinary sense than it is a "mnemonicon" or an "aistheticon"
(or an encyclopedia). Fortunately, however, these complications do not directly
affect our concerns, which are with texts, and thus roughly fit the common sense
model of organization from "meanings" to beliefs and memories. Were we to extend
this study to aesthetic response in, say, the visual arts, however, we would have
to be more careful not to allow the prejudicial nature of the term to mislead
us.

In the present context, then, we may think of the lexicon as structured into "lexical
entries," which is to say, meanings, perceptions, and so on, clustering around
lexical items, such as "monkey," "dhvani," "chant," "compose" "saffron" etc. These
entries are multiply cross-indexed, such that each entry is part of a number of
sub-networks which allow access across entries. Thus "monkey" is linked with "ape"
and "chimpanzee" in one network (of related species), "Africa" and "India" in
another network (of habitats), etc. These networks may themselves be categorized
by some lexical item (e.g., "primate"), but they need not be-though, of course,
one can always construct a category for a given network (e.g., "habitats of monkeys")
and, indeed, we use such ad hoc categories to access relevant lexical information.

As should already be clear, our mental lexicon-a structure which exists only in
individual people's minds and thus varies somewhat from person to person-is different
from a dictionary or encyclopedia, not only in content, but in structure. Perhaps,
most importantly, it does not have a single strict organizing principle (e.g.,
alphabetical order). Rather, our mental lexicon can be re-ordered in a variety
of ways to suit our accessing needs. For example, we may access words by first
consonant (as in a dictionary, more or less) or by some other phonetic property,
such as final syllable-if, say, we are writing an alliterative, rhymed poem. In
most contexts, however, we are likely to access items by topic. One way of thinking
about this is in terms of the sub-networks just mentioned. When discussing animals,
we re-order our lexicon in such a way as to make, for example, "monkey" more directly
or swiftly accessible than when discussing computer technology (see Garman 293).
Indeed, this effect is probably cumulative. If we are discussing Africa and animals,
then "monkey" will be more accessible than if we are discussing animals alone.
This "extra" accessibility of related terms, concepts, etc., is standardly interpreted
in terms of "priming." In this view, the introduction of one item "primes" cross-indexed
items (e.g., "monkey" will prime the entries for "ape," "primate," etc.). At this
level, priming can be understood as a re-ordering of the lexicon, such that the
primed,, items are those which are placed highest in the order of a lexical search.
For example, when we read or hear the syllable "mon" at the beginning of a word,
we begin searching the lexicon for a "fit." When the topic is Wall Street, we
will reach "money" first; when the topic is animals related to apes, we will reach
"monkey" first. (In fact, the situation is somewhat more complicated than this,
but the point is adequately valid for present purposes.)

On the other hand, "priming" has complex effects not only on access, but on other
aspects of comprehension and response. In this way, it is not simply a matter
of re-ordering the lexicon. There seems to be a change of status in the primed
network. It is, in effect, brought out of long-term memory, though it is not accessed
directly in consciousness. When speaking of "primates," I will have part of one
lexical entry in consciousness (and parts of several lexical entries in "rehearsal
memory," which may be understood as almost conscious or as circulating through
consciousness). I also have a whole range of material stored in long-term memory
(e.g., the meaning of "ambidextrous" visual images of my first day at school,
and a vast range of other currently irrelevant stuff). A network of primed lexical
entries is clearly in a different mental state from either the conscious/rehearsal
material or the material stored in long-term memory. Consider the following sentence:
"Animals commonly associated with Africa would include lions, tigers, elephants,
and apes." When I am directly conscious of the word "ape," the rest of the sentence
is in rehearsal memory, and various irrelevant entries (e.g., "ambidextrous")
are in long-term memory. The lexical entry for "monkey," however, is primed and
is therefore in a state different from "apes" and "lions" on the one hand, and
"ambidextrous," on the other. The primed entries are, we might say, placed temporarily
in a sort of "buffer" between long-term memory and consciousness (or between long-term
memory and rehearsal memory), a buffer which operates in part to allow access
with minimal search.

This, I think, gives us a basis for rearticulating and reunderstanding Abhinavagupta's
notion that traces may be activated while not consciously recalled. Specifically,
we may conceive of dhvani as lexical networks primed and stored temporarily in
the memory buffer. Note that these networks may "decay" rapidly, which is to say,
drop quickly out of the buffer if they are not repeatedly primed. (The rapid decay
of priming effects is a well documented phenomenon: see, for example Garman 294.)
However, when repeatedly primed, they would yield a pattern of unstated suggestions
of precisely the sort we discussed above as defining dhvani.

To get a more detailed idea of how this might work, however, we need to consider
not only the relations between lexical entries, but their internal structures
as well. Here, as elsewhere, cognitive scientists are not unanimous in theories
or even terminology. I will use the terms "schema" "prototype," and "exemplum"
to define three types of sub-structure within a lexical item. By "schema," I mean
a hierarchy of principles defining/explaining a lexical item. The hierarchy is
based on "definitiveness" or "centrality" of the properties; the most central
or definitive properties are at the top of the hierarchy, with increasingly peripheral
properties listed in descending order. For example, being organic is more central
to our conception of a human being than is having two arms-a person with one arm
would count as a human being, but a statue with two arms would not. (This roughly
recapitulates the distinction between the dictionary meaning and encyclopedic
factual beliefs, but the distinction is one of degree, not of kind; some elements
are "more definitive" than others, rather than one set of elements being "the
definition" and another being "the empirical beliefs.") As virtually all cognitive
scientists emphasize, this hierarchy involves a number of "default" options. These
are properties or relations which we assume to hold unless we are told otherwise.
Thus "human" includes "having two arms" unless we are given information about
a birth defect or amputation. By "prototype," I mean a sort of concretization
of the schema with all default values in place, including those which are relatively
unimportant in our schematic hierarchy (cf. Johnson-Laird and Wason 342). Again,
these vary somewhat from person to person, but probably all of us have a prototype
of, say, "man" as having two arms, two legs, etc. My prototype, from what I can
infer, has dark hair (i.e., neither bald nor grey-haired nor blond), is clean
shaven, etc. Our prototype of a bird is generally recognized to be roughly equivalent
to a robin (thus rather different from an eagle, and more different still from
a penguin). By "exemplum," I mean any specific instance of a category-for example,
any man I know is an "exemplum" of man.

It is extremely important to note that all three sub-structures operate in cognition.
We do not merely interpret or respond to the world and to other people in terms
of abstract schemas. Indeed, we are more likely to understand and respond by reference
to prototypes or particularly salient exempla (on the latter, see, for example
chapter three of Ross and Nisbett). Indeed, this central cognitive role of exempla
is crucial to literary response for a number of reasons. Most importantly, it
appears to be the case that exempla-which are regularly primed and accessed along
with schemas and prototypes-often have considerable affective force. Clearly,
many such exempla (e.g., the memory of a close relative's death) cause one to
feel strong emotion when one recollects them consciously.

This, then, gives us a way of translating and redeveloping Abhinavagupta's notion
that the affective component of memory traces is the source of rasa. Specifically,
the dhvani of a text may now be understood as the schemas, prototypes, and exempla
primed or placed in a buffer between long term memory and rehearsal memory. The
exempla include not only representational content, but affective force. When an
exemplum is sustained in the buffer, its affective force should lead to precisely
the sorts of effect hypothesized by Abhinavagupta when he explained rasa in terms
of memory traces. Specifically, we have every reason to expect that the affective
force of an exemplum would bleed into consciousness without our being aware of
its associated representational content, which is to say, the perceptual or propositional
aspect of the exemplum. Or, rather, we have every reason to expect this when a
set of affectively and representationally related exempla (e.g., sorrowful exempla
of love in separation) are maintained in the buffer through repeated priming due
to the patterned dbvani of a text. (It is important that the exempla are related
both affectively and representationally because the representation, so to speak,
gives definition to the affect; for example, sorrow over death is not the same
as sorrow over love in separation.)

Interestingly, there is some empirical research on literary response which would
seem to support these hypotheses. Specifically, Uffe Seilman, Steen Larsen, Laszlo
Halasz, Janos Laszlo, and others have conducted experiments designed to determine
the degree to which literary and non-literary texts spontaneously elicit personal
memories from readers (see Halasz; Larsen, Laszlo, and Seilman, and citations
in both articles). This research is in some degree questionable on methodological
grounds-primarily, some obvious variables (e.g., subject matter) are inadequately
controlled. In addition, the researchers appear to assume that aesthetic response
is purely a function of the type of text being read and has little or nothing
to do with the attitude or approach of the reader. Nonetheless, this research
is broadly consistent with the present analysis, and provides at least some prima
facie support.

THE NATURE OF MIND AND THE CLAIMS OF THEORIES

Having said all this, however, I should step back for a moment and say something
about the precise nature of my claims. As mentioned at the outset, I am a realist
in the sense of someone who believes that there is a fact of the matter about
how the world is-and about how the mind is. However, I am not a realist in the
sense of believing that the best theory available at any given moment is likely
to be true or even likely to be talking about real things. Indeed, I do not even
believe that the best theory should necessarily be confined to a discussion of
entities which we can presume to be real. As Zenon Pylyshyn has indicated, every
actual psychological theory is realist at some level; the only question is: at
what level do we claim that our theoretical posits and principles represent real
entities? Pylyshyn notes that our claims may range from the barest input/output
realism to a full blown realism extending all the way to details concerning posits,
etc. (see "Rules" 236 and Computation 87-89). Consider linguistic theory. In the
input/output case, a theorist claims only that the theory will generate all and
only grammatical sentences of a given language. He/she does not claim that the
way the theory generates them is the same way in which they are produced by speakers;
he/she does not claim that the rules of the theory have "psychological reality"
in the minds of speakers of the language. In the "full blown" case, in contrast,
the theorist does claim that the rules of the theory and the rules in speakers'
minds are identical-down to specific notational details. Very few theorists make
either of these extreme claims, though some are closer to the input/output extreme,
and others are closer to the full blown extreme. I consider myself to fall pretty
squarely in the middle.

Specifically, I believe that the mind should ultimately be understood as subjective/experiential
(as I have argued at length in the first and second chapters of On Interpretation).
Many theories impute to the mind a quasi-objectal character, most obviously when
they posit mental items which are in principle inaccessible and thus in principle
non-subjective (as is the case with Chomsky's underlying structures), but also
when they speak of mind in terms of internal objects and forces. When theorists
objectify the mind in this way, they base their theories on what I believe to
be false premises. This is not to say that I think theorists should stop doing
this. Daniel Dennett has pointed out that, when faced with extremely complex material
phenomena, we frequently adopt an "intentional stance" toward the phenomena, attributing
an intention in order to allow ourselves to think productively about the object
or situation (see Dennett 236-39). Inverting Dennett, I do not see any reason
that we could not adopt an "objectal stance" toward subjectivity in order to construct
models by which we may better understand this highly complex phenomenon.

On the other hand, model-whether intentional or objectal-should in my view seek
to preserve the broad structural relations of the original phenomena. it is this
structural correlation which I would claim for the model of mind presented above.
In other words, I would not claim that there is a lexicon per se, a buffer, etc.
However, I would say that there is a subjective distinction which preserves the
structural relations which define and distinguish these entities. Put simply,
our subjectivity could be such that we have one thing under consideration and,
after that, all our memories are equal. If this were so, then our subjectivity
would not preserve the structural relations which distinguish long-term memory
and the buffer. My contention, then, is that there are such structural correlate-and
that the theories of Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta can be revised and developed
in terms of these structures in such a way as to provide a fruitful and plausible
account of aesthetic experience which can be part of an ongoing research program.

In any event, however we decide ultimately to construe theories of the mental
lexicon, I hope that the preceding discussion of Sanskrit poetics and cognitive
science has demonstrated the value of the former and its remarkable congruence
with the latter. More importantly, I hope that the explication, synthesis, and
extension of these ideas has led to a more adequate understanding of literary
response and that the resulting theory might productively be incorporated into
the empirical research programs now flourishing in the discipline of cognitive
science.